While tier 14 was split up between three different raids, the second tier of the expansion returned things to the grand, sweeping, epic raids of yore, with the largest raid since Icecrown Citadel (or, technically, Ulduar, thanks to Ra-Den.) We had heard much about the Thunder King, so it stood to reason that we would eventually fight the guy (though that may have been a surprise for those who had not done the quests in Kun Lai where he was resurrected.)
Throne of Thunder was intentionally created to feel huge, and it is neatly divided into four sections (that correspond with the LFR wings) with quite different tones and motifs.
Last Stand of the Zandalari:
The Zandalari's sudden turn into villains was a bit of a shock in patch 4.1 (especially given that there were friendly Zandalari quest-givers as recent as 4.0 in Stranglethorn Vale) but it's been long enough that, yeah, I guess we can accept them as bad guys. The relationship between the Trolls and the Mogu made the Zandalari a major presence within the raid, and the first boss is in fact one of the old friendly NPCs from Yojamba Isle (it would seem that this expansion is all about having us fight former friends, especially in the next raid,) Jin'rokh the Breaker. Jin'rokh serves very well as a gatekeeper boss, with relatively simple mechanics but who also requires a certain minimum DPS to defeat. This is mostly a brute-force fight that functions as a decent gear-check.
Horridon, on the other hand, is a crazy execution fight that requires everyone to have their wits about them, dealing with tons of different kinds of adds with different abilities. This one was more of a raid-destroyer, and while at this point it's not too bad, this was the fight that made you dread going in there in the early days. As a second boss, perhaps it was a little over-tuned? However, one thing I kind of enjoy is the way that both Horridon and the third boss, the Council of Elders, play on the theme of the four major Troll tribes uniting together under the Zandalari. Not to mention the fact that on the Council fight, we're sort of having that rematch with Gara'jal that he promised after we killed him in Mogu'shan Vaults.
Forgotten Depths:
Ah, this is the section that I believe was designed to test your patience with LFR players. While the bosses themselves are not too hard (Megaera is probably the easiest in the raid,) the trash area leading to the second boss can be a real struggle, given how easy it is for people to accidentally (or trollingly) pull additional packs. Likewise, the trash before Ji-Kun makes it very easy to fight tons of enemies you didn't need to just because someone walked over something they shouldn't have.
But the bosses, you say? Mostly, I like them, though Tortos could be a little frustrating (after shockingly little trash,) mainly due to the huge number of adds and the fact that those Whirl Turtles are nearly impossible to avoid getting hit by. As a Paladin tank, I've never been allowed to tank the boss (which is funny, because Paladins are definitely not "the AoE tank" that they used to be - I'd give that honor to Monks or DKs,) which I think is the one role that's fairly simple in this one. Still, I appreciate the Mario Bros. reference of having us defeat turtles and kick their shells at our enemies.
Megaera is very simple, but Ji-Kun has some interesting mechanics. The only sad thing about said mechanics is that only a tiny portion of the raid gets to experience them. Fighting Ji-Kun herself is pretty standard boss stuff, but being able to fly between nests killing adds before they become a problem is quite a lot of fun, especially if you play a class that has good cleave abilities. I'm always a fan of funky fight mechanics, and flying around fighting giant birds is pretty unusual.
Halls of Flesh-Shaping:
Somehow, the Halls of Flesh-Shaping fell the most "dungeon-like" area we've been in a long time. That might be because Durumu the Forgotten is basically a Beholder from D&D. The trash in this wing is notably quick. The trash before Durumu is actually substantial, but doesn't feel too bad because it all happens in the same room as the boss. Meanwhile, Primordius' trash is a quick AoE gauntlet-zerg, and there are only two pulls before Dark Animus (though the enemies have a lot of health.)
These fights had some tricky mechanics. Durumu in particular could be frustrating because you could be doing really well for about half the fight, and then totally wipe out when he does his maze. And in some ways, this was really more Blizzard's fault than ours, because seeing your way through that maze was, and to an extent still is, pretty hard. Still, conceptually I love the fight, frustrating as it may be at times.
Primordius is fun, but the absurd number of adds and objects on the ground and just plain stuff going on can make it a lag-intensive one (actually, all three of these fights have their sources of lag.) This is one of those fights that lets you feel really awesome, especially if you get a lucky set of buffs (having an extra 50% crit is pretty cool.)
And then there's Dark Animus. I understand that this fight works entirely differently on Normal and Heroic, in that you have to game which golems you kill to make sure he doesn't hit 100 Anima. But on Raid Finder, where he's only got 80 to work with, it's a fight that actually settles down after a bit. Really, the only major danger of this fight is when the Large Anima Golems are out, but damn if it isn't a fun little bit of chaos. It's also kind of funny that the more golems you leave up, the quicker you can just get to working on the boss itself. Anyway, my main thing about Dark Animus is that it's one of the coolest looking bosses they've done.
Pinnacle of Storms:
The Pinnacle of Storms is quick and easy until you get to the final boss of the raid, and then it's insane. Really, I think we should mention Lei Shen here, because he's the most complicated fight I've yet seen in Mists (though I have not done the Garrosh fight, so get back to me.) Iron Qon, I felt, was somewhat underwhelming. The Twin Consorts, on the other hand, have the fun aspect where if you have super DPS (and I've only done this once,) you can turn a four-phase fight into a two-phase one. The Celestial mechanic here felt weirdly tacked-on, but it's still pretty cool (though I've never actually done the sigil-drawing myself.)
Really, the Pinnacle of Storms does feel like the home-stretch of the raid, but it doesn't have the distinctive character that the middle two wings have. It also strikes me as kind of funny that, other than the handful of guards before Dark Animus, this is the first wing where we actually fight any Mogu in "The Mogu Raid," (ok, to be fair, MSV was also "The Mogu Raid.")
A Return to the Epic Raid:
Throne of Thunder was the first raid to break double-digits since Icecrown Citadel. As a raid, I'm actually a big fan. There's a lot of cool stuff going on in it, along with interesting new models and fight mechanics. I guess my only real critique of the place is that it's rigidly linear. Now granted, this is true of all Mists raids. Still, the place does just feel enormous. Simply trying to imagine how far you have to walk from the beginning of it to Lei Shen's sanctuary: it must be miles and miles (though are we meant to understand that the entire Forgotten Depths and Halls of Flesh-shaping are a detour? Having only run it on LFR, I don't know if there's like a scene after Council of Elders that shows why we've jumped down into a deep dark pit.
It'll be a little while before I get the post-mortem for SoO up, given that I have yet to see the whole place, but you can expect it not long after the Tuesday after next.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
The Underhold: Tank Perspective
Yes, it took me a while, but I finally got around to running the third wing of Siege of Orgrimmar.
The Underhold is the first half of the massive complex Garrosh has built within Ragefire Chasm. You'll be fighting your way through lots of Kor'kron forces, as well as a number of beasts imported from Pandaria and Northrend.
Mercifully, this wing has 3, rather than 4 bosses, so even with the kinds of wipes you see in the early days of an LFR wing, it will still take less time than Vale or Gates.
Trash Before Malkorok:
The trash before Malkorok is fairly straightforward, but there's a lot of it. You'll need to make your way around to one of the side rooms, and then up the stairs to reach Malkorok.
Malkorok:
Garrosh's #2 and head of the Kor'kron (presumably Saurfang resigned in disgust at some point) volunteered to be dosed with Y'shaarj's essence and has thus become a fearsome dire orc.
This is a fairly simple fight, but puts a serious strain on healers, tanks, and DPS due to some unforgiving mechanics.
The core unusual mechanic to this encounter is Ancient Miasma, which will prevent ALL healing. However, your heals will be converted instead into a buff called Ancient Bulwark, which is a damage absorption shield. Ancient Bulwark cannot be more than 100% of your health, so healers will have to A: front-load a lot of healing on the raid, and B: be careful not to over heal.
During this phase, Malkorok does three things major things. One is that he will create purple void zones. Rather than avoiding these, you want 5 people to soak them, or else they will go off and damage the whole raid.
The other two abilities go hand in hand, and can be a bit of a memory challenge. Malkorok will do Arcing Slams, which deal a bunch of damage to anyone they hit, in a cone. After three of these, he will instead do Breath of Y'Shaarj, which will deal enormous AoE damage in any area that had been hit with the previous three Arcing Slams. So you'll need to remember roughly where those three areas are.
Malkorok gains rage as the fight goes on. When he hits 100, he'll go into a Blood Fury. At this point, the whole raid needs to stack on the tank to share damage, as he does something like 1.8 million per hit on Raid Finder, but it's split between everyone it hits. The good news is that during this time, the Ancient Miasma goes away, allowing you to finally heal up anyone whose health had dropped during phase one.
Blood Fury does not last terribly long, and then you simply go back to phase one. Rinse and repeat.
Trash Before Spoils of Pandaria:
I don't know if this works differently for Horde, but on the Alliance side, after defeating a few of the same kinds of trash mobs from before, High Tinker Mekkatorque will show up and engage the Kor'kron, permanently crowd-controlling everything between you and the next "boss."
Spoils of Pandaria:
Oh, Spoils. This is a weird, weird fight that is mostly about a tank's ability to gauge how much he or she can pull, and the rest of the raid's ability to keep up with the tank.
First, you need to divide the raid in two (which is a pain on LFR for the normal reasons.) Each groups should have one tank and three healers, and as even as you can make the dps (just split your raid as evenly as you can.)
After engaging the Titan chest in the middle of the platform, you'll be able to jump down into two rooms diagonally across from each other.
What you need to do is to shut down the security system. To do that, you need to release the Titan energy stored within the enemies that are shut in the boxes.
One team will deal with Mantid enemies first, and the other will have Mogu. Generally, I've found that the Mantid seem to be harder for whatever reason.
If you find yourself split too unevenly, there are chains you can use to jump out of your room and back to the high walkway where you begin the encounter, so that you can switch sides, but if you've split the raid up well, this shouldn't be necessary.
The smallest boxes have one unit of energy, and fairly simple enemies. The medium ones have, I believe, 6 energy, but are of course tougher. And the biggest boxes have mini-bosses that are considerably more dangerous, but also grant something like 12 energy.
Each side needs to fill the energy bar to 50, which will activate a lever that opens a gate to the next room. If either side wipes, or if the gate is not opened soon enough, the security system will kill the entire raid. In order to open the gate, both sides will need to be at full energy.
Once you've done this the first time, each side will come across a new room that has the other type of enemy, so the Mogu side is now the Mantid side, and vice versa.
As a tip: Tanks should be the ones to open the crates, just to let them have some control (and have an easier time picking up adds.) Try to crack open the next box when the contents of the previous box starts to get low. And remember that you can handle probably 3 or 4 small boxes, or 2 medium ones, or 1 large one, depending on the group. I'd usually try to make sure that there were always some small-enemy boxes open and at least one medium-box one.
Many of these enemies have abilities. As a tank, you'll probably not be super-aware of them. The key for tanks here is to be brave and pull a little more than you think you can, because that timer is pretty strict. And always have some open boxes unless you're certain that you'll have enough energy when the current enemies are down.
Trash before Thok the Bloodthirsty:
The trash before Thok is fairly simple. There are several bats that will lift raid members very high up and then drop them. There's a Yeti who works basically just like Icehowl in Trial of the Crusader (don't be in the way of its charge) and a Mushan that has a frontal-cone and a bleed that stacks.
With the trash cleared, Thok comes out.
Thok the Bloodthirsty
Thok is a giant Devilsaur that the Kor'kron are trying to turn into a beast of war. There are three jail cells surrounding the massive arena here, with Saurok, Jinyu, and Yaungol prisoners.
This fight is actually fairly simple, but requires precision in execution.
Thok will alternate between phases at certain health percentages (in Flex, Normal and Heroic it's more complicated than that, but it's just percentages on LFR.) The abilities in the Main phase will change as the fight goes on, but they're dealt with in largely the same way.
The Main Phase, Thok uses a cone-effect tank-swap, but also has a tail swipe, so tanks should step in when they taunt and step out when they're no longer on the boss. Thok does some periodic AoE, but nothing terribly complicated.
At a certain percentage, Thok goes into a Blood Rage and begins to chase a random raid member, getting faster as he runs and doing massive damage to anyone in his path. The affected raid member should kite him away from the raid and run as fast as he or she can.
At the same time, a Kor'kron Jailer will show up at the entrance to the room. Tanks should pick up this Jailer and drag them to one of the three cells (which roughly make an equilateral triangle around the arena.) DPS should focus down the jailer. When he falls, one player can right-click on him to take his key, getting a minute-long buff that allows them to open a cell.
The released prisoners will attempt to help you fight Thok, but instead, Thok will eventually decide to eat them, gaining new powers based on the guy he just ate. The Saurok gives Thok poison damage (though I honestly am not sure what difference the poison makes.) The Jinyu gives him frost attacks, most notably allowing his cone-attack to freeze enemies at 5 stacks, and requiring dps to break people out. The Yaungol gives him a fire buff, which is most notable in that he will begin to leave Burning Blood on the ground, meaning that the tanks will need to slowly move him around the arena (gradually, and without turning too much, if possible.)
After all three prisoners are dead, it's just a race to kill him.
Conclusion for the Underhold:
The Underhold is two refreshingly conventional fights with a really, really weird one sandwiched in the middle. While the initial trash is a little thick, it's not quite like Gates of Retribution. And given that this is one fewer boss than the previous two wings, it should be relatively quick and easy for those who want to get a wind down quickly - assuming that people get better (and I include myself here) in Spoils of Pandaria.
The Underhold is the first half of the massive complex Garrosh has built within Ragefire Chasm. You'll be fighting your way through lots of Kor'kron forces, as well as a number of beasts imported from Pandaria and Northrend.
Mercifully, this wing has 3, rather than 4 bosses, so even with the kinds of wipes you see in the early days of an LFR wing, it will still take less time than Vale or Gates.
Trash Before Malkorok:
The trash before Malkorok is fairly straightforward, but there's a lot of it. You'll need to make your way around to one of the side rooms, and then up the stairs to reach Malkorok.
Malkorok:
Garrosh's #2 and head of the Kor'kron (presumably Saurfang resigned in disgust at some point) volunteered to be dosed with Y'shaarj's essence and has thus become a fearsome dire orc.
This is a fairly simple fight, but puts a serious strain on healers, tanks, and DPS due to some unforgiving mechanics.
The core unusual mechanic to this encounter is Ancient Miasma, which will prevent ALL healing. However, your heals will be converted instead into a buff called Ancient Bulwark, which is a damage absorption shield. Ancient Bulwark cannot be more than 100% of your health, so healers will have to A: front-load a lot of healing on the raid, and B: be careful not to over heal.
During this phase, Malkorok does three things major things. One is that he will create purple void zones. Rather than avoiding these, you want 5 people to soak them, or else they will go off and damage the whole raid.
The other two abilities go hand in hand, and can be a bit of a memory challenge. Malkorok will do Arcing Slams, which deal a bunch of damage to anyone they hit, in a cone. After three of these, he will instead do Breath of Y'Shaarj, which will deal enormous AoE damage in any area that had been hit with the previous three Arcing Slams. So you'll need to remember roughly where those three areas are.
Malkorok gains rage as the fight goes on. When he hits 100, he'll go into a Blood Fury. At this point, the whole raid needs to stack on the tank to share damage, as he does something like 1.8 million per hit on Raid Finder, but it's split between everyone it hits. The good news is that during this time, the Ancient Miasma goes away, allowing you to finally heal up anyone whose health had dropped during phase one.
Blood Fury does not last terribly long, and then you simply go back to phase one. Rinse and repeat.
Trash Before Spoils of Pandaria:
I don't know if this works differently for Horde, but on the Alliance side, after defeating a few of the same kinds of trash mobs from before, High Tinker Mekkatorque will show up and engage the Kor'kron, permanently crowd-controlling everything between you and the next "boss."
Spoils of Pandaria:
Oh, Spoils. This is a weird, weird fight that is mostly about a tank's ability to gauge how much he or she can pull, and the rest of the raid's ability to keep up with the tank.
First, you need to divide the raid in two (which is a pain on LFR for the normal reasons.) Each groups should have one tank and three healers, and as even as you can make the dps (just split your raid as evenly as you can.)
After engaging the Titan chest in the middle of the platform, you'll be able to jump down into two rooms diagonally across from each other.
What you need to do is to shut down the security system. To do that, you need to release the Titan energy stored within the enemies that are shut in the boxes.
One team will deal with Mantid enemies first, and the other will have Mogu. Generally, I've found that the Mantid seem to be harder for whatever reason.
If you find yourself split too unevenly, there are chains you can use to jump out of your room and back to the high walkway where you begin the encounter, so that you can switch sides, but if you've split the raid up well, this shouldn't be necessary.
The smallest boxes have one unit of energy, and fairly simple enemies. The medium ones have, I believe, 6 energy, but are of course tougher. And the biggest boxes have mini-bosses that are considerably more dangerous, but also grant something like 12 energy.
Each side needs to fill the energy bar to 50, which will activate a lever that opens a gate to the next room. If either side wipes, or if the gate is not opened soon enough, the security system will kill the entire raid. In order to open the gate, both sides will need to be at full energy.
Once you've done this the first time, each side will come across a new room that has the other type of enemy, so the Mogu side is now the Mantid side, and vice versa.
As a tip: Tanks should be the ones to open the crates, just to let them have some control (and have an easier time picking up adds.) Try to crack open the next box when the contents of the previous box starts to get low. And remember that you can handle probably 3 or 4 small boxes, or 2 medium ones, or 1 large one, depending on the group. I'd usually try to make sure that there were always some small-enemy boxes open and at least one medium-box one.
Many of these enemies have abilities. As a tank, you'll probably not be super-aware of them. The key for tanks here is to be brave and pull a little more than you think you can, because that timer is pretty strict. And always have some open boxes unless you're certain that you'll have enough energy when the current enemies are down.
Trash before Thok the Bloodthirsty:
The trash before Thok is fairly simple. There are several bats that will lift raid members very high up and then drop them. There's a Yeti who works basically just like Icehowl in Trial of the Crusader (don't be in the way of its charge) and a Mushan that has a frontal-cone and a bleed that stacks.
With the trash cleared, Thok comes out.
Thok the Bloodthirsty
Thok is a giant Devilsaur that the Kor'kron are trying to turn into a beast of war. There are three jail cells surrounding the massive arena here, with Saurok, Jinyu, and Yaungol prisoners.
This fight is actually fairly simple, but requires precision in execution.
Thok will alternate between phases at certain health percentages (in Flex, Normal and Heroic it's more complicated than that, but it's just percentages on LFR.) The abilities in the Main phase will change as the fight goes on, but they're dealt with in largely the same way.
The Main Phase, Thok uses a cone-effect tank-swap, but also has a tail swipe, so tanks should step in when they taunt and step out when they're no longer on the boss. Thok does some periodic AoE, but nothing terribly complicated.
At a certain percentage, Thok goes into a Blood Rage and begins to chase a random raid member, getting faster as he runs and doing massive damage to anyone in his path. The affected raid member should kite him away from the raid and run as fast as he or she can.
At the same time, a Kor'kron Jailer will show up at the entrance to the room. Tanks should pick up this Jailer and drag them to one of the three cells (which roughly make an equilateral triangle around the arena.) DPS should focus down the jailer. When he falls, one player can right-click on him to take his key, getting a minute-long buff that allows them to open a cell.
The released prisoners will attempt to help you fight Thok, but instead, Thok will eventually decide to eat them, gaining new powers based on the guy he just ate. The Saurok gives Thok poison damage (though I honestly am not sure what difference the poison makes.) The Jinyu gives him frost attacks, most notably allowing his cone-attack to freeze enemies at 5 stacks, and requiring dps to break people out. The Yaungol gives him a fire buff, which is most notable in that he will begin to leave Burning Blood on the ground, meaning that the tanks will need to slowly move him around the arena (gradually, and without turning too much, if possible.)
After all three prisoners are dead, it's just a race to kill him.
Conclusion for the Underhold:
The Underhold is two refreshingly conventional fights with a really, really weird one sandwiched in the middle. While the initial trash is a little thick, it's not quite like Gates of Retribution. And given that this is one fewer boss than the previous two wings, it should be relatively quick and easy for those who want to get a wind down quickly - assuming that people get better (and I include myself here) in Spoils of Pandaria.
Monday, October 7, 2013
The Significance of the Timeless Isle
Part of me assumes that the Timeless Isle was simply a way for Blizzard to create some (relatively) quick outdoor content that played with the conventions, serving primarily as an experimental grounds for doing level-capped content that did not involve daily quests.
And yet, the place has some odd stuff going on. It's called the Timeless Isle because time doesn't really flow there. It is perpetually stuck at just before sunset. It's haunted by the ghosts of human sailors (and a small handful of living ones) as well as ancient elemental spirits and a tribe of fire-worshipping Yaungol. And, for some reason, the spirit of Shaohao and the August Celestials hang out there.
Most of that stuff would work just fine as a standard "farewell to Pandaria" zone, but it's the time issues that make me curious.
Canonically, we haven't traveled through time since going to the War of the Ancients to retrieve the Dragon Soul before it was corrupted into the Demon Soul. In order to do so, however, we first had to contend with the fact that Murozond, the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight and future incarnation of the benevolent Nozdormu, had somehow locked things up, forcing us to travel to a post-apocalyptic future and defeat him.
On the Timeless Isle, there are two dragons. One is Wrathion, who is interested in using the odd phenomena of the place to help outfit his champion. The other is Kairoz, a member of the Bronze Dragonflight who is accompanied by many of the Timewalkers - a mortal group who is gradually taking on the role that the Keepers of Time used to play - protecting the timeways from interference.
Kairoz has you gather Epoch Stones in order to augment his ability to see through time. After the fall of Deathwing, all the Aspects expended their powers, significantly weakening their ability to perform their duties. Kairoz is thus trying to gain some of that power back - for benefit of Azeroth, of course.
Yet as we watch the visions, first seeing Thrall and Saurfang fighting their way into Ragefire Chasm, we gradually begin to see other aspects of the future. We see Garrosh defeated, yes, as one might expect of a raid boss. We see him (spoilers!) imprisoned at the Temple of the White Tiger, with Anduin presumably attempting to help rehabilitate him (good luck, kid.) Yet we see Kairoz himself in a number of these visions. Lastly, we see him standing by while Soridormi, Nozdormu's consort and probably the second most powerful Bronze Dragon in the world, dies.
There's a dangerous fact that the Bronze Dragons must realize: the Infinite Dragonflight is them. Murozond is the future Nozdormu, and he apparently dies just as Aman'thul had told him he would. The other Infinites may indeed be our own Bronze friends.
Kairoz himself, could become one of their agents, even if at this point in the timeline, he wants nothing more than to fulfill his Titan-assigned duty.
So, to go meta here, what is the purpose of the Timeless Isle? In many ways, it is a farewell to the lush land we've spent the last year in. We get to chill with nearly all the characters we've met along the way, and we get to find even more toy-like items in case our bags weren't filled up enough.
And yet, to throw all this stuff in here... Is Blizzard hinting at something?
Granted, sometimes Blizzard plays the long game. After all, we had Lady Sinestra gathering Netherdrake Eggs in Outland two expansions prior to culmination of the Black/Nether/Twilight Dragon plot.
But on the other hand, what if we're getting a huge preview of the next expansion and we don't even know it?
It seems like the two big concepts that are being tossed around for the next expansion are either a South Seas one with Azshara, or a Burning Legion themed one. Granted, some of that is based on the possibly-fake title that was floating around, the Dark Below, but those seem to be popular ideas - expansions that seem inevitable.
In theory, you could say the Infinite Dragonflight story ended in End Time. And yet, as I was saying in a post not too long ago, when you're dealing with time travelers, you can't get too comfortable with cause and effect. Sure, we may have seen the death of the Infinite Dragonflight (in a future that never came to pass, mind.) But we have still yet to see their creation.
Could we find out on November 8th that the next expansion will be all about time-travel?
Theoretically, we're going to get a 5.5, but rather than a raid patch, it will be another story-based, transitional one. (I don't know if this will simply take the place of the pre-expansion 6.0 patch.) Imagine, then, if the Timeless Isle, known for being totally unchanging, suddenly changes - and dramatically so. Shattered Timeways splinter out from this temporal anomaly, and it all centers around our buddy Kairoz. Hell, take a look at the Sha and then at the Infinite Dragons. Notice a similarity?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to hop in my virtual time machine and check in with the guys in November.
And yet, the place has some odd stuff going on. It's called the Timeless Isle because time doesn't really flow there. It is perpetually stuck at just before sunset. It's haunted by the ghosts of human sailors (and a small handful of living ones) as well as ancient elemental spirits and a tribe of fire-worshipping Yaungol. And, for some reason, the spirit of Shaohao and the August Celestials hang out there.
Most of that stuff would work just fine as a standard "farewell to Pandaria" zone, but it's the time issues that make me curious.
Canonically, we haven't traveled through time since going to the War of the Ancients to retrieve the Dragon Soul before it was corrupted into the Demon Soul. In order to do so, however, we first had to contend with the fact that Murozond, the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight and future incarnation of the benevolent Nozdormu, had somehow locked things up, forcing us to travel to a post-apocalyptic future and defeat him.
On the Timeless Isle, there are two dragons. One is Wrathion, who is interested in using the odd phenomena of the place to help outfit his champion. The other is Kairoz, a member of the Bronze Dragonflight who is accompanied by many of the Timewalkers - a mortal group who is gradually taking on the role that the Keepers of Time used to play - protecting the timeways from interference.
Kairoz has you gather Epoch Stones in order to augment his ability to see through time. After the fall of Deathwing, all the Aspects expended their powers, significantly weakening their ability to perform their duties. Kairoz is thus trying to gain some of that power back - for benefit of Azeroth, of course.
Yet as we watch the visions, first seeing Thrall and Saurfang fighting their way into Ragefire Chasm, we gradually begin to see other aspects of the future. We see Garrosh defeated, yes, as one might expect of a raid boss. We see him (spoilers!) imprisoned at the Temple of the White Tiger, with Anduin presumably attempting to help rehabilitate him (good luck, kid.) Yet we see Kairoz himself in a number of these visions. Lastly, we see him standing by while Soridormi, Nozdormu's consort and probably the second most powerful Bronze Dragon in the world, dies.
There's a dangerous fact that the Bronze Dragons must realize: the Infinite Dragonflight is them. Murozond is the future Nozdormu, and he apparently dies just as Aman'thul had told him he would. The other Infinites may indeed be our own Bronze friends.
Kairoz himself, could become one of their agents, even if at this point in the timeline, he wants nothing more than to fulfill his Titan-assigned duty.
So, to go meta here, what is the purpose of the Timeless Isle? In many ways, it is a farewell to the lush land we've spent the last year in. We get to chill with nearly all the characters we've met along the way, and we get to find even more toy-like items in case our bags weren't filled up enough.
And yet, to throw all this stuff in here... Is Blizzard hinting at something?
Granted, sometimes Blizzard plays the long game. After all, we had Lady Sinestra gathering Netherdrake Eggs in Outland two expansions prior to culmination of the Black/Nether/Twilight Dragon plot.
But on the other hand, what if we're getting a huge preview of the next expansion and we don't even know it?
It seems like the two big concepts that are being tossed around for the next expansion are either a South Seas one with Azshara, or a Burning Legion themed one. Granted, some of that is based on the possibly-fake title that was floating around, the Dark Below, but those seem to be popular ideas - expansions that seem inevitable.
In theory, you could say the Infinite Dragonflight story ended in End Time. And yet, as I was saying in a post not too long ago, when you're dealing with time travelers, you can't get too comfortable with cause and effect. Sure, we may have seen the death of the Infinite Dragonflight (in a future that never came to pass, mind.) But we have still yet to see their creation.
Could we find out on November 8th that the next expansion will be all about time-travel?
Theoretically, we're going to get a 5.5, but rather than a raid patch, it will be another story-based, transitional one. (I don't know if this will simply take the place of the pre-expansion 6.0 patch.) Imagine, then, if the Timeless Isle, known for being totally unchanging, suddenly changes - and dramatically so. Shattered Timeways splinter out from this temporal anomaly, and it all centers around our buddy Kairoz. Hell, take a look at the Sha and then at the Infinite Dragons. Notice a similarity?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to hop in my virtual time machine and check in with the guys in November.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
The Mists of Pandaria Postmortem - Monks
The Death Knight was an incredibly exciting addition to World of Warcraft, with its unique starting experience and boosted levels, with its cosmetic differences and free weapon enchants, and with its wild overpowered-ness and hideously difficult balancing that took all of Wrath to get right.
The Monk had none of that, but perhaps that's all right. It does have unique combat animations, though, which is something.
Like the Death Knight, the Monk was made available to a wide variety of races (though not the Cataclysm-era ones,) yet because of its co-introduction with the Pandaren, it is perhaps not surprising that most people made a Pandaren Monk.
In addition to bringing in a new tank and dps spec, the Monk is the first new healer to be introduced since WoW's launch in 2004. Sadly, I can't actually say much about Monks as healers, as I've never really played any healer. I do know that they seem to be ok, but that's from a tank/dps perspective, so whatever balance issues there might exist, I don't really know.
The Monk resource system manages to blend the old with the new, keeping a Rogue's energy but using Chi instead of Combo Points. While Energy is important, it's really the Chi that gives the class its rhythm.
Appropriately, Monks feel very mobile, mainly thanks to Roll, and their ability to fight with fluidity is reflected in the mechanics of the class.
Brewmaster:
Case in point, the Brewmaster feels very different from any other tank on the field. Sure, in this era of active mitigation, you can't just wade into battle and expect to survive on heavy armor alone, but the Monk needs to be constantly working to keep up that survivability. Essentially, you have to juggle maintaining Shuffle at all times, maximizing uptime on Elusive Brew, and getting your powered-up Guard up as often as you can, while trying to maintain one spare Chi to use Purifying Brew if you get in trouble. Compare this to, say, Death Knights, who simply have to hit Death Strike as often as they can.
On the other hand, in my experience, Threat seems easier to maintain on a Monk. With Keg Smash as well as Dizzying Brew and Spinning Crane Kick, coupled with the mobility granted by Roll and Clash, not to mention your Ox statue, it's not too hard to pick up those big swarms that tend to be a nightmare for other tanks if they don't use some big AoE attack at the exact moment on the exact target they need.
Monk tanking is challenging, but fun, and it's a real change of pace from the other tanks.
Windwalker:
I'll admit I mainly know Windwalkers from soloing. Essentially, the Windwalker does feel pretty fast-paced, like other Monks. Despite mobility abilities like Roll and Flying Serpent Kick, you'll also need to know when to plant your feet and do Fists of Fury. While Windwalkers do fine in single-target situations and excel in AoE, the cleave-like situations that make up most trash groups are a little tricker, though I believe that's what Storm Earth and Fire are for (I've only run one dungeon as a Windwalker.)
Like Brewmasters, you have a lot of cooldowns, both short-term rotational and long-term burst damage, to juggle. Windwalkers use Tigereye Brew frequently to boost their damage, and Fists of Fury is rotational, but feels almost like a cooldown. The only baseline cooldown that is more than a minute seems to be Energizing Brew, which boosts your energy regeneration. However, at least in my experience, one tends to be more worried about spending Chi than gasping for Energy to Jab more. But again, I've done very little Windwalking other than solo questing.
Mistweaver:
I can't really talk about this from practical experience, but Mistweavers do seem to have a very different style of healing, using channeled spells and other spells that can be cast during those that will boost them and refresh DoTs.
Additionally, they seem to downplay Spirit-based mana regeneration in favor of Mana Tea. Again, I can't comment all that much on this.
While Mistweavers have a built-in Atonement-style damage-to-healing mechanic, it looks like you can't just play as if you were DPS and still put out the same level of healing. I imagine that if you're doing content that you out-gear, you can probably just spam your melee attacks, but I get the impression that Eminence healing isn't as good at dealing with big spikes on the tank.
The Monk HQ:
Perhaps the most notable thing about Monks as a class is Zen Pilgrimage, and the Peak of Serenity. Like Moonglade and Acherus, the Peak of Serenity is kind of the "class guildhall," with amenities designed for that class. However, just as Acherus had far more interesting things than Moonglade, such as training dummies and rune forges, the Peak of Serenity is specially-built for leveling (and level-capped) Monks.
This is primarily because of the quests. Every ten levels, the Monk gets a cool piece of blue-quality gear. In addition, there's a daily quest there (requiring you to defeat the same opponents) that awards "Enlightenment," which greatly increases you reputation gains. At the level cap, you instead get a whopping 3000 mastery rating, which is borderline absurd.
Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting:
Despite these advantages, and the overall benefit of being designed from the ground up more recently than all those classes that were carrying eight years (or four, for DKs) of baggage, Blizzard managed to do a good job in balancing Monks. Unlike in Wrath, where DKs were the best tanks and the best DPS (at least at first,) Monks have slid in fairly inconspicuously, doing very well for those who master them, but not overshadowing the older classes.
So overall, a successful addition to the game.
(Now give me a Demon Hunter.)
The Monk had none of that, but perhaps that's all right. It does have unique combat animations, though, which is something.
Like the Death Knight, the Monk was made available to a wide variety of races (though not the Cataclysm-era ones,) yet because of its co-introduction with the Pandaren, it is perhaps not surprising that most people made a Pandaren Monk.
In addition to bringing in a new tank and dps spec, the Monk is the first new healer to be introduced since WoW's launch in 2004. Sadly, I can't actually say much about Monks as healers, as I've never really played any healer. I do know that they seem to be ok, but that's from a tank/dps perspective, so whatever balance issues there might exist, I don't really know.
The Monk resource system manages to blend the old with the new, keeping a Rogue's energy but using Chi instead of Combo Points. While Energy is important, it's really the Chi that gives the class its rhythm.
Appropriately, Monks feel very mobile, mainly thanks to Roll, and their ability to fight with fluidity is reflected in the mechanics of the class.
Brewmaster:
Case in point, the Brewmaster feels very different from any other tank on the field. Sure, in this era of active mitigation, you can't just wade into battle and expect to survive on heavy armor alone, but the Monk needs to be constantly working to keep up that survivability. Essentially, you have to juggle maintaining Shuffle at all times, maximizing uptime on Elusive Brew, and getting your powered-up Guard up as often as you can, while trying to maintain one spare Chi to use Purifying Brew if you get in trouble. Compare this to, say, Death Knights, who simply have to hit Death Strike as often as they can.
On the other hand, in my experience, Threat seems easier to maintain on a Monk. With Keg Smash as well as Dizzying Brew and Spinning Crane Kick, coupled with the mobility granted by Roll and Clash, not to mention your Ox statue, it's not too hard to pick up those big swarms that tend to be a nightmare for other tanks if they don't use some big AoE attack at the exact moment on the exact target they need.
Monk tanking is challenging, but fun, and it's a real change of pace from the other tanks.
Windwalker:
I'll admit I mainly know Windwalkers from soloing. Essentially, the Windwalker does feel pretty fast-paced, like other Monks. Despite mobility abilities like Roll and Flying Serpent Kick, you'll also need to know when to plant your feet and do Fists of Fury. While Windwalkers do fine in single-target situations and excel in AoE, the cleave-like situations that make up most trash groups are a little tricker, though I believe that's what Storm Earth and Fire are for (I've only run one dungeon as a Windwalker.)
Like Brewmasters, you have a lot of cooldowns, both short-term rotational and long-term burst damage, to juggle. Windwalkers use Tigereye Brew frequently to boost their damage, and Fists of Fury is rotational, but feels almost like a cooldown. The only baseline cooldown that is more than a minute seems to be Energizing Brew, which boosts your energy regeneration. However, at least in my experience, one tends to be more worried about spending Chi than gasping for Energy to Jab more. But again, I've done very little Windwalking other than solo questing.
Mistweaver:
I can't really talk about this from practical experience, but Mistweavers do seem to have a very different style of healing, using channeled spells and other spells that can be cast during those that will boost them and refresh DoTs.
Additionally, they seem to downplay Spirit-based mana regeneration in favor of Mana Tea. Again, I can't comment all that much on this.
While Mistweavers have a built-in Atonement-style damage-to-healing mechanic, it looks like you can't just play as if you were DPS and still put out the same level of healing. I imagine that if you're doing content that you out-gear, you can probably just spam your melee attacks, but I get the impression that Eminence healing isn't as good at dealing with big spikes on the tank.
The Monk HQ:
Perhaps the most notable thing about Monks as a class is Zen Pilgrimage, and the Peak of Serenity. Like Moonglade and Acherus, the Peak of Serenity is kind of the "class guildhall," with amenities designed for that class. However, just as Acherus had far more interesting things than Moonglade, such as training dummies and rune forges, the Peak of Serenity is specially-built for leveling (and level-capped) Monks.
This is primarily because of the quests. Every ten levels, the Monk gets a cool piece of blue-quality gear. In addition, there's a daily quest there (requiring you to defeat the same opponents) that awards "Enlightenment," which greatly increases you reputation gains. At the level cap, you instead get a whopping 3000 mastery rating, which is borderline absurd.
Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting:
Despite these advantages, and the overall benefit of being designed from the ground up more recently than all those classes that were carrying eight years (or four, for DKs) of baggage, Blizzard managed to do a good job in balancing Monks. Unlike in Wrath, where DKs were the best tanks and the best DPS (at least at first,) Monks have slid in fairly inconspicuously, doing very well for those who master them, but not overshadowing the older classes.
So overall, a successful addition to the game.
(Now give me a Demon Hunter.)
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Warlocks and the Fight against Homogenization
Warlocks used to be somewhat similar. All three specs would keep up three DOTs and then fill the time between refreshing said DOTs with either Shadow Bolt or Incinerate (or, in the case of Demonology, both - depending on whether you got a Molten Core proc.)
Mists of Pandaria did a lot of things to revamp the way that talents and abilities worked. You see, while Cataclysm had seen a pretty big set of changes to the old talent-spec system, it still suffered from the same problems.
Essentially, here's how things used to work:
Most of the abilities that a class got were baseline - regardless of spec. The only abilities or passive effects (though there were very few baseline passive effects then) that were spec-specific were from talents. While Cataclysm had you officially choose your spec at ten and get several of these things immediately, the effect was that you had a hard cap on the number of key passive abilities as well as active abilities that any one spec could have.
Talents, of course, looked extremely different than they do now. Talents were all specific to one spec or another, and in order to unlock the more advanced ones, you had to invest additional talent points in your particular tree. Cataclysm forced you to invest enough points into a single tree to get its final talent before allowing you to go into other trees, but seriously, if you didn't play before Mists of Pandaria, the talent system back then would be utterly unrecognizable.
Because you could only have so many talented abilities, it meant that most had to be baseline. That meant that while a Protection Paladin was not going to be using a lot of healing spells, they still got the full complement of Holy Light, Flash of Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance.
The Mists system essentially changed it so that choosing one's spec would simply determine which abilities you got as you leveled up - and without the old talent tree system, you could make an arbitrary number of new passive effects and abilities for a particular spec. Talents, then, became something for the class, rather than the spec, and they've tried to make the choices interesting (usually with decent success, if you ask me.)
So: Warlocks.
This system allowed a class that had at one time been very homogenous to become radically different between its specs. Unlike, say, Mages, who had a clear elemental theme to at least distinguish the specs visually, Warlocks always struggled to make the specs distinct.
Now, however, they play almost like different classes.
Perhaps the key to this distinction is the introduction of new secondary resources. Soul Shards were always a Warlock mechanic, and while the Cataclysm change to turn them from physical objects that would take up one of your bag slots into something that was part of the UI made them a lot more convenient, they always kind of struggled for relevance.
So Soul Shards were played with to make them interesting for Affliction (in addition to their Cataclysm-era utility, Haunt was changed to function using them and the Nightfall proc, adding a little unpredictability to the spec, which is always good.) Meanwhile, Destruction and Demonology just tossed the Soul Shards out, getting their own resources.
Burning Embers allows Destruction to build up until they're ready to release a burst of incredibly powerful Chaos Bolts, and Demonic Fury allowed them to focus the Demonology spec entirely around what was always the coolest ability the spec had: Metamorphosis.
The talent revamp also allowed them to trim a huge amount of fat away from the class. Affliction retained all of its old DoTs, because it is, after all, the DoT spec of the DoT class (even its fillers are Channeled DoTs now - it's kind of ridiculous.) However, Destruction only has a single DoT now in the form of Immolate, and Demonology, while it does like to maintain both Corruption and Doom, really uses those as just one small piece of the puzzle.
The identities of each spec have always been there: Affliction's all about DoTs, Demonology is all about dealing damage with/as demons, and Destruction's all about nukes, but those identities had always been somewhat vague and unfocused. The new system makes these identities core to the experience of playing those specs.
These days, while I don't know if I'm all that good at it (my Warlock always has slightly disappointing DPS given the gear I have,) I enjoy playing the class a whole lot.
I think the model of this revamp could set a great precedent to make a clear distinction between specs, particularly of the other pure-DPS classes. The fact that a single spec could have an entirely different resource system (admittedly something they had done earlier with Balance Druids) allows a game with eleven (and hopefully more to come) classes to still make your playstyle feel unique.
Mists of Pandaria did a lot of things to revamp the way that talents and abilities worked. You see, while Cataclysm had seen a pretty big set of changes to the old talent-spec system, it still suffered from the same problems.
Essentially, here's how things used to work:
Most of the abilities that a class got were baseline - regardless of spec. The only abilities or passive effects (though there were very few baseline passive effects then) that were spec-specific were from talents. While Cataclysm had you officially choose your spec at ten and get several of these things immediately, the effect was that you had a hard cap on the number of key passive abilities as well as active abilities that any one spec could have.
Talents, of course, looked extremely different than they do now. Talents were all specific to one spec or another, and in order to unlock the more advanced ones, you had to invest additional talent points in your particular tree. Cataclysm forced you to invest enough points into a single tree to get its final talent before allowing you to go into other trees, but seriously, if you didn't play before Mists of Pandaria, the talent system back then would be utterly unrecognizable.
Because you could only have so many talented abilities, it meant that most had to be baseline. That meant that while a Protection Paladin was not going to be using a lot of healing spells, they still got the full complement of Holy Light, Flash of Light, Divine Light, and Holy Radiance.
The Mists system essentially changed it so that choosing one's spec would simply determine which abilities you got as you leveled up - and without the old talent tree system, you could make an arbitrary number of new passive effects and abilities for a particular spec. Talents, then, became something for the class, rather than the spec, and they've tried to make the choices interesting (usually with decent success, if you ask me.)
So: Warlocks.
This system allowed a class that had at one time been very homogenous to become radically different between its specs. Unlike, say, Mages, who had a clear elemental theme to at least distinguish the specs visually, Warlocks always struggled to make the specs distinct.
Now, however, they play almost like different classes.
Perhaps the key to this distinction is the introduction of new secondary resources. Soul Shards were always a Warlock mechanic, and while the Cataclysm change to turn them from physical objects that would take up one of your bag slots into something that was part of the UI made them a lot more convenient, they always kind of struggled for relevance.
So Soul Shards were played with to make them interesting for Affliction (in addition to their Cataclysm-era utility, Haunt was changed to function using them and the Nightfall proc, adding a little unpredictability to the spec, which is always good.) Meanwhile, Destruction and Demonology just tossed the Soul Shards out, getting their own resources.
Burning Embers allows Destruction to build up until they're ready to release a burst of incredibly powerful Chaos Bolts, and Demonic Fury allowed them to focus the Demonology spec entirely around what was always the coolest ability the spec had: Metamorphosis.
The talent revamp also allowed them to trim a huge amount of fat away from the class. Affliction retained all of its old DoTs, because it is, after all, the DoT spec of the DoT class (even its fillers are Channeled DoTs now - it's kind of ridiculous.) However, Destruction only has a single DoT now in the form of Immolate, and Demonology, while it does like to maintain both Corruption and Doom, really uses those as just one small piece of the puzzle.
The identities of each spec have always been there: Affliction's all about DoTs, Demonology is all about dealing damage with/as demons, and Destruction's all about nukes, but those identities had always been somewhat vague and unfocused. The new system makes these identities core to the experience of playing those specs.
These days, while I don't know if I'm all that good at it (my Warlock always has slightly disappointing DPS given the gear I have,) I enjoy playing the class a whole lot.
I think the model of this revamp could set a great precedent to make a clear distinction between specs, particularly of the other pure-DPS classes. The fact that a single spec could have an entirely different resource system (admittedly something they had done earlier with Balance Druids) allows a game with eleven (and hopefully more to come) classes to still make your playstyle feel unique.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
The Mists of Pandaria Postmortem - The Raids, Tier 14
First off, like the Dungeons article, I'm going to focus on the raids themselves, and not raiding as a whole over the course of Mists. Additionally, because Siege of Orgrimmar is still missing nearly half of its bosses on LFR, I'm going to break this section up by tier.
Thankfully, after the pretty sorry number of raids (or rather, the rather sorry size of said raids) that came with Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria has released a series of grand, epic raids.
Tier Fourteen used the Burning Crusade raid tier model, dividing the tier between three raids, or perhaps more precisely, having a "pre-tier" beginning raid in addition to tier 14 proper. Each of these raids on its own is fairly small, but put together, one gets an impressive 16-boss raid tier, making it the largest since tier 7.
Also, unlike, say, tier 5 or tier 11, the raids here are meant to be completed in a specific order. The first raid within the tier actually awards a lower quality of gear, and does not have any tier tokens within it, making it the clear "starter raid."
Mogu'shan Vaults:
Somewhat in the tradition of Karazhan, MSV is a raid that's all about exploring. Lorewalker Cho accompanies you the whole way, giving insight (or expressing a mutual confusion) about whatever you're dealing with.
Mechanically, the bosses are varied in interesting ways. The Stone Guard feels a little like Halfus Wyrmbreaker in that it varies from week to week. Personally I think Feng the Accursed should have been the first boss, as his mechanics are simpler for a raid to deal with and therefore he makes for a good "gatekeeper" boss, but such is life. I enjoyed Gara'jal the Spiritbinder quite a bit, though his totem mechanic is far more complicated on Normal than it is on Raid Finder (and I'll get into that issue when I do my big "raids, dungeons, and scenarios" article.) The Spirit Kings also had some fun variation, in that you could find yourself fighting them in a different order each week.
And then there's Elegon, the guy who drops you through the floor. On one hand, it was annoying to see how many people would fall, but then, I can't really blame Blizzard here. My only issue with this fight was the degree of lag that I encountered during it. Finally Will of the Emperor was one of those fights that I detested at first, and then grew to find very fun. Essentially, this is one of those fights where you need the raid to commit to performing the mechanics the way they were intended, or else you're going to have a mess on your hands. Once the dps realizes the purpose of Titan Gas and the tanks figure out how to dodge the dual bosses' attacks (DBM helps a lot there.) it actually becomes a sort of elegant dance of a fight, which are always fun.
Aesthetically, I'm always a big fan of going into forbidden ruins. While it's hard to create a good sense of stakes in such a situation (Ulduar being an exception,) I think that as a convention for the beginning raid of any expansion, it makes a lot of sense. Also, Lorewalker Cho is always fun to have around.
Heart of Fear:
While the Klaxxi are my favorite of the 5.0 factions, I felt that Heart of Fear was sort of the dullest of the raids in Mists. Granted, I'm not saying it's a bad raid, and there are fun mechanics (and one really painful one,) but so many of the bosses felt like another "kill this one Mantid guy." I realize that it's the Mantid headquarters, so it would be kind of funny to do anything other than kill Mantid, but oh well.
Aesthetically I also think they could have played a little more with the fact that you're up in a tree. Really at no point in the raid does the building you're in feel organic.
There were a few mechanics here that made little bursts of lag a real pain, particularly on the Blade Lord's final phase. One could find oneself running down the little corridor, getting almost to the end, and then simply because of luck, a new tornado would form underneath you on the previously-pristine section of the floor you were on. This could be very frustrating.
And then there's Garalon. First of all, it's always tough to get someone who's willing to do pheromones, and usually when there is, they're terrible at it. The buff one gets when dealing with the legs is nice, but the area you have to stand in is pretty tiny, and the fact that the boss is often turning very quickly means that you'll rarely benefit from it to any great effect. Still, I will say that this was a boss that had unique mechanics, and was a very good one for training tanks how to use active mitigation, as he had really just one big telegraphed move to deal with.
I did enjoy the Amber Shaper fight, mainly because I always thought that there ought to be a fight where players have to attack one of their own raid members.
Terrace of Endless Spring:
On one hand, this raid commits the grave sin of being tiny and having you fight two bosses in the exact same place (though admittedly, Sunwell did this too.) On the other hand, there are some cool mechanics here.
The Protectors of the Endless have a lot of things going on, but aren't terribly interesting. On the other hand, Tsulong does something cool by blending a conventional boss fight with a variation on Valithria Dreamwalker.
Lei Shi is kind of annoying for two reasons: one is that the water elemental adds spawn at percentages rather than after a set amount of time, meaning that you're going to have to deal with them very frequently if you overgear the place. The other is that those classes that don't have much in the way of untargeted AoE (Ret Paladins have none at all) don't really have anything to do when she hides (and she hides a lot!)
However, the crown jewel of tier 14 is the Sha of Fear, and this is a fight that I actually enjoy quite a lot. Not only is this one of those fights that was great for introducing this new Active Mitigation tanking concept (Thrash) but we also got to be sent off in little 5-man groups to fight mini-bosses at the same time.
While small, and not varying much, at the very least the Terrace of Endless Spring gave you a nice view. Given the current state of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, it may in fact be the last place to see how pleasant the old Vale used to be.
Tier 14 Conclusion:
The first tier of any expansion is the one where you're going to want the most variation, and Tier 14 certainly delivered that. While the linear nature of the tier meant you didn't have much in the way of options for how you would like to progress, it did solve the old problem of arguing with your guild over which of the new raids you'd want to go to.
Thankfully, after the pretty sorry number of raids (or rather, the rather sorry size of said raids) that came with Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria has released a series of grand, epic raids.
Tier Fourteen used the Burning Crusade raid tier model, dividing the tier between three raids, or perhaps more precisely, having a "pre-tier" beginning raid in addition to tier 14 proper. Each of these raids on its own is fairly small, but put together, one gets an impressive 16-boss raid tier, making it the largest since tier 7.
Also, unlike, say, tier 5 or tier 11, the raids here are meant to be completed in a specific order. The first raid within the tier actually awards a lower quality of gear, and does not have any tier tokens within it, making it the clear "starter raid."
Mogu'shan Vaults:
Somewhat in the tradition of Karazhan, MSV is a raid that's all about exploring. Lorewalker Cho accompanies you the whole way, giving insight (or expressing a mutual confusion) about whatever you're dealing with.
Mechanically, the bosses are varied in interesting ways. The Stone Guard feels a little like Halfus Wyrmbreaker in that it varies from week to week. Personally I think Feng the Accursed should have been the first boss, as his mechanics are simpler for a raid to deal with and therefore he makes for a good "gatekeeper" boss, but such is life. I enjoyed Gara'jal the Spiritbinder quite a bit, though his totem mechanic is far more complicated on Normal than it is on Raid Finder (and I'll get into that issue when I do my big "raids, dungeons, and scenarios" article.) The Spirit Kings also had some fun variation, in that you could find yourself fighting them in a different order each week.
And then there's Elegon, the guy who drops you through the floor. On one hand, it was annoying to see how many people would fall, but then, I can't really blame Blizzard here. My only issue with this fight was the degree of lag that I encountered during it. Finally Will of the Emperor was one of those fights that I detested at first, and then grew to find very fun. Essentially, this is one of those fights where you need the raid to commit to performing the mechanics the way they were intended, or else you're going to have a mess on your hands. Once the dps realizes the purpose of Titan Gas and the tanks figure out how to dodge the dual bosses' attacks (DBM helps a lot there.) it actually becomes a sort of elegant dance of a fight, which are always fun.
Aesthetically, I'm always a big fan of going into forbidden ruins. While it's hard to create a good sense of stakes in such a situation (Ulduar being an exception,) I think that as a convention for the beginning raid of any expansion, it makes a lot of sense. Also, Lorewalker Cho is always fun to have around.
Heart of Fear:
While the Klaxxi are my favorite of the 5.0 factions, I felt that Heart of Fear was sort of the dullest of the raids in Mists. Granted, I'm not saying it's a bad raid, and there are fun mechanics (and one really painful one,) but so many of the bosses felt like another "kill this one Mantid guy." I realize that it's the Mantid headquarters, so it would be kind of funny to do anything other than kill Mantid, but oh well.
Aesthetically I also think they could have played a little more with the fact that you're up in a tree. Really at no point in the raid does the building you're in feel organic.
There were a few mechanics here that made little bursts of lag a real pain, particularly on the Blade Lord's final phase. One could find oneself running down the little corridor, getting almost to the end, and then simply because of luck, a new tornado would form underneath you on the previously-pristine section of the floor you were on. This could be very frustrating.
And then there's Garalon. First of all, it's always tough to get someone who's willing to do pheromones, and usually when there is, they're terrible at it. The buff one gets when dealing with the legs is nice, but the area you have to stand in is pretty tiny, and the fact that the boss is often turning very quickly means that you'll rarely benefit from it to any great effect. Still, I will say that this was a boss that had unique mechanics, and was a very good one for training tanks how to use active mitigation, as he had really just one big telegraphed move to deal with.
I did enjoy the Amber Shaper fight, mainly because I always thought that there ought to be a fight where players have to attack one of their own raid members.
Terrace of Endless Spring:
On one hand, this raid commits the grave sin of being tiny and having you fight two bosses in the exact same place (though admittedly, Sunwell did this too.) On the other hand, there are some cool mechanics here.
The Protectors of the Endless have a lot of things going on, but aren't terribly interesting. On the other hand, Tsulong does something cool by blending a conventional boss fight with a variation on Valithria Dreamwalker.
Lei Shi is kind of annoying for two reasons: one is that the water elemental adds spawn at percentages rather than after a set amount of time, meaning that you're going to have to deal with them very frequently if you overgear the place. The other is that those classes that don't have much in the way of untargeted AoE (Ret Paladins have none at all) don't really have anything to do when she hides (and she hides a lot!)
However, the crown jewel of tier 14 is the Sha of Fear, and this is a fight that I actually enjoy quite a lot. Not only is this one of those fights that was great for introducing this new Active Mitigation tanking concept (Thrash) but we also got to be sent off in little 5-man groups to fight mini-bosses at the same time.
While small, and not varying much, at the very least the Terrace of Endless Spring gave you a nice view. Given the current state of the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, it may in fact be the last place to see how pleasant the old Vale used to be.
Tier 14 Conclusion:
The first tier of any expansion is the one where you're going to want the most variation, and Tier 14 certainly delivered that. While the linear nature of the tier meant you didn't have much in the way of options for how you would like to progress, it did solve the old problem of arguing with your guild over which of the new raids you'd want to go to.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
And there's a release date for the Warcraft movie... which is cool, I guess.
Looks like Dec. 15, 2015 will see the release of the long-awaited Warcraft movie.
We don't know exactly what story they'll be telling, but we do know that Duncan Jones - who is mostly known for his smaller, indie sci-fi films Moon and Source Code (the former of which I have seen, and thought it was fantastic) - will be directing it, and there are a handful of actors either rumored or signed.
Here's the thing:
I think the Warcraft setting is great, and has a lot of very exciting stories that take place within it.
I love movies.
What I've seen of Jones' work, I have liked a lot.
But:
Has there ever been a good video game movie? As far as I know, the Prince of Persia movie was passable, if not actually good, and I guess people liked the first Tomb Raider movie, but the vast majority of video game films are absolute dreck.
Also, Warcraft is a great setting, but "great" refers to both quality and scope. There's no way that one can touch on everything here in one movie. Sure, I bet they're hoping to make it a franchise, but getting this first one out is going to be a challenge.
For the record, I'm immensely skeptical. If this movie winds up being good at all, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
But just in the event that it is, here's what I'd like to see reflected in the story:
Warcraft's main strength (and one that has been tested a little during Garrosh's reign as Warchief) is that the "bad guy" races are actually not truly evil (the Forsaken are the closest, though.) Tolkien always struggled with making his Orcs purely evil, as it kind of clashed with his Catholic belief in the possibility for redemption. In Warcraft, the Orcs are fully capable of redemption, and indeed, there are some, like Thrall, who are far more noble and good-hearted than a lot of humans. Sure, they can make a film about the conflict between Alliance and Horde (or if they start with the First War, they can go with Stormwind vs. the Horde,) but I'd love for them to at least touch on the fact that some Orcs aren't actually evil. If they could give folks like Durotan some screentime (assuming it's First War-era) to show that the Orcs aren't inherently bad guys, it would really help to show off the central nuance of the Warcraft setting.
Again, not getting my hopes up, but there you have it.
We don't know exactly what story they'll be telling, but we do know that Duncan Jones - who is mostly known for his smaller, indie sci-fi films Moon and Source Code (the former of which I have seen, and thought it was fantastic) - will be directing it, and there are a handful of actors either rumored or signed.
Here's the thing:
I think the Warcraft setting is great, and has a lot of very exciting stories that take place within it.
I love movies.
What I've seen of Jones' work, I have liked a lot.
But:
Has there ever been a good video game movie? As far as I know, the Prince of Persia movie was passable, if not actually good, and I guess people liked the first Tomb Raider movie, but the vast majority of video game films are absolute dreck.
Also, Warcraft is a great setting, but "great" refers to both quality and scope. There's no way that one can touch on everything here in one movie. Sure, I bet they're hoping to make it a franchise, but getting this first one out is going to be a challenge.
For the record, I'm immensely skeptical. If this movie winds up being good at all, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
But just in the event that it is, here's what I'd like to see reflected in the story:
Warcraft's main strength (and one that has been tested a little during Garrosh's reign as Warchief) is that the "bad guy" races are actually not truly evil (the Forsaken are the closest, though.) Tolkien always struggled with making his Orcs purely evil, as it kind of clashed with his Catholic belief in the possibility for redemption. In Warcraft, the Orcs are fully capable of redemption, and indeed, there are some, like Thrall, who are far more noble and good-hearted than a lot of humans. Sure, they can make a film about the conflict between Alliance and Horde (or if they start with the First War, they can go with Stormwind vs. the Horde,) but I'd love for them to at least touch on the fact that some Orcs aren't actually evil. If they could give folks like Durotan some screentime (assuming it's First War-era) to show that the Orcs aren't inherently bad guys, it would really help to show off the central nuance of the Warcraft setting.
Again, not getting my hopes up, but there you have it.
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